


Crown of Love

by FernDavant



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Gender-Neutral Pronouns, M/M, nb Doctor, screwed up interpersonal relationships, unconventional poly love triangle
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-01
Updated: 2017-07-01
Packaged: 2018-11-21 21:01:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 815
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11365542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FernDavant/pseuds/FernDavant
Summary: The Doctor likes Nardole. The Doctor likes Missy. They're trying to have their cake and eat it too.





	Crown of Love

On Mondays, they go to the vault, arms full of takeaway food and mind full of a story, a tale of a weekend of adventure that they shared with Bill. There’s something slightly guilty in the whole process—Missy is trapped in this vault (albeit, they rationalize, for her own good), and so they should be trapped on Earth, but now they leave every weekend, exploring the universe again.

There’s something guiltier still when they’re on their knees before her, mouth pressed to Missy’s core.

\--

On Tuesdays, they leave the vault, usually in the wee hours in the morning, exhausted and empty. They can never figure out if they are empty from a sense of lightness or if they’re merely hollowed out.

“Rehabilitation going well?” Nardole always asks, tone chipper.

“It’s a process,” the Doctor always says, and they wonder if Nardole notices something, a smear or lipstick, or worse, if he can smell her on them.

“Well that’s good,” Nardole will say. “That’s good.”

\--

On Thursdays, Nardole makes dinner. Nardole is capable of making only about four different meals, and he cycles through them every month. It’s not that the food is bad—it’s quite good, generally—but the Doctor hates monotony, hates patterns, and predictability. They swore a long time ago never to be predictable, yet now they have spaghetti Thursdays and stuffed eggplant Thursdays and Thursdays that follow Wednesdays and that happen, once a week, with regularity. How disgusting.

\--

On Saturdays, they forgo tutorials with Bill, and instead the two of them will step into the TARDIS (occasionally chaperoned by a cross Nardole) and _go_ somewhere. _Do_ something. Help someone or fix something or just sight-see.

“An educational day out,” they explain, again, to Nardole, as the three of them view the quad-suns of Helios VII or rescue an exploration expedition or save a dying race.

“Uh-huh,” Nardole will say, cross and not at all chipper.

“It is,” the Doctor will protest, obscurely disappointed that they have disappointed Nardole.

“It clearly is,” Bill will agree.

\--

On Tuesdays, the Doctor is convinced that Nardole knows. He must know, surely? Guilt is a hell of a thing, and the Doctor has always worn it well. They wear their hearts on their sleeve and their guilt on their chest and their come in their pants, and surely it’s obvious.

“Rehabilitation going well?”

“Stop asking me that,” they snap.

\--

On Thursdays, Nardole never makes desserts. He tried it, for a bit, baking biscuits and cakes and sweet pies, then trying simpler recipes—custards mainly. But he gave up, eventually. Nothing he whipped up makes the Doctor as happy as a package of biscuits, so they both sit on the couch in the back room to the Doctor’s office, quietly eating biscuits, swapping a packet back and forth.

It’s boring. Deeply boring. Delicious and sugary, but ultimately boring.

Nardole wipes crumbs from their front. The Doctor never notices that his hands linger.

“Thanks.”

\--

On Mondays, Missy reads him. Every guilty thought, every lidded glance.

And something more.

“How are you and Nardole?” Missy asks.

“There is no ‘me and Nardole,’” they say, confused. “There is me. Then there is Nardole. We are separate beings. It’s not that hard. Difficult. It’s not that difficult.”

“Hmm,” Missy says. “Hmm.”

\--

On Thursdays, they don’t talk about Saturdays. Or sometimes they do.

“If you die, what then?”

“There’s always you. I trust you.”

Nardole preens. “But someone needs to look after me. I mean…I need servicing, periodically.”

“Servicing.” The word sounds weird on their tongue. “Servicing. I could set something up in the TARDIS. A servicing station. For servicing.”

Nardole rolls his eyes. “You can’t keep doing this, sir. You can’t—“

The Doctor kisses him.

\--

On Thursdays, the Doctor kisses Nardole.

\--

On Mondays, Missy laughs at him. “Do you think he doesn’t know?”

“Why would he know? He hates you.”

“Those two things aren’t connected,” Missy sing-songs.

“He hates you, and he’d hate me if he knew. Ergo, he doesn’t know.”

“I could never hate you,” Missy says, obscurely.

“Those two things aren’t connected,” the Doctor replies.

“Hmm,” Missy says. “Hmm.”

\--

On Tuesdays, they lay next to Missy.

“Can’t fuck both of us,” Missy hums, shagged out and smug.

\--

On Tuesdays, they lay next to Nardole.

“Don’t clip the juniper bush,” Nardole mumbles in his sleep—or his powered down time, it’s a blurred line.

\--

On Sundays, they sit and wonder why they do it all. A love of being loved, perhaps. Or they weren’t loved enough as a child. Or both probably. They’d ask Freud about, but he’s an asshole and wrong besides, so what’s the point?

\--

On Mondays, Missy asks, “Do you know what love looks like?”

They’re not sure they do. “Of course.”

“Do you know what good is?”

“Of course.”

They are doing love and they are doing good, but probably not at the same time.


End file.
